Cleaning Forclosures

I see all the hipe on line people doing cleaning foreclosures as a way to get Cash Flow…Does it work? I’m in Idaho, we have thousands of houses setting and waiting…

Cleaning as in a maid service?

I bet none of that hype included things like having to clean up fecal matter (not in a toilet) in houses… I looked at a foreclosure a few weeks ago that was pretty unbelievable because of how nasty it was. I’ve seen lots of foreclosures that don’t even get cleaned up of have junk hauled away. Sometimes the banks will just leave them as is.

Exactly, the only reason I ever cleaned up lbs of human feces voluntarily, was with the prospect of making 20K plus on a flip…Do the cleaning businesses pay that?

I agree with the above posters. My last house I bought (where I live) had been cleaned before I bought it. I nearly vomited several times removing the carpet from the house. It was awful. I guess everyone’s got their number for what their time’s worth, but I don’t work that hard for someone else anymore.

I had a property preservation business before and take it from me, it’s not worth the headache. First of all, not that many banks deal with small contractors anymore. They mostly give the work to Asset management companies who then hire out sub-contractors to do the actual cleaning, lock changes, landscaping etc. Of course by then they have already taken a big chunk of the profit. Then they will pay you peanuts for doing the work and sometimes you wont get paid for 30, 60 even 90 days. They are also extremely picky on the quality of the work and will find any minuscule reason to not pay or deduct your pay. I did it for a year and it sucked terribly. Just my 2 cents…

Haha! This reminds me of my 2nd or 3rd rental back in the day. I bought my biggest NON-FIRE related ghetto rehab (to become a rental) property ever - and it was something else. Homeless people had lived in the house for years…and stolen the plumbing, electrical and HVAC systems out of there. And rainwater seeped in the backdoor for who knows how long, the sinks were stolen out of the place…oh and someone (a copper thief from who knows how many months or years prior) had fallen through the ceiling so there was a lot of sheetrock damage. It was bad.

My handyman, at the time, refused to clean the “dried up homeless man poop” out of the toilet. He just wanted to replace the toilet, and el-cheapo me refused to let him do that. LOL! So I was the brave one and did it. It wasn’t that big of a deal, and I wore a rubber glove and used a plastic bag too. Yeah, it was nasty, but I am not a p****y either so I didn’t let it bother me. LOL! However would I do it again? Naaaah - because my current handyman WOULD do it.

P.S. Now that place is super nice looking, and has been occupied continuously since we rehabbed it.

Today, I took my wife in one of the houses we just bought. The squatter that had been there had a pit bull inside w/ a litter of puppies. The house was dirtier today than when I walked thru it a few weeks ago. There’s a couple land mines of pit bull poo in there now, so I get to clean that up…

That is certainly untrue at all. Have you talked to a professional realtor already?

you can always call for a cleaning service in troubles as such, however, if you are really having a problem in with the house itself, you probably need to contact your realtor to talk this thing over.

My Mom used to do that type of thing when she was rehabbing in the 90’s I remember some of those houses would have crap piled up to your knees ALL THE WAY though the house! She would have us try and pick up some of that crap too. Eventually she found a service, through Goodwill or someone else that would send 30-40 homeless people looking to get back on their feet with a truck and have the place clean up in a day for less than 100.00.

You already know this but people like you are an asset to those neighborhoods, once they see that screwed up house looking nice, they try and do little fix ups to their houses, it brings up the whole neighborhood.

You might also check with your local HUD “marketing and management” contractor. These are contractors designated by HUD to manage the maintenance, repair and sale of HUD-owned properties.